Me and My Old Lady

Saturday night out with my writing group, we got to talking about the show, “Girls,” and fell into two old conversational chestnuts: where did the words “man” and “woman” go, and what are you supposed to call the person you’re involved with, romantically?

We started with the title of the show: when did it become okay again, the oldest among us wondered (his mind ranging back to the 1970s when it became not-okay) to call women girls? To which the universal response was: it’s okay again not because suddenly it’s okay to infantilize women relative to men, but because it’s not okay to call anybody a grownup. We’re all “guys” and “girls” now – there are no “men” and “women” except when the relationship has an exclusively formal dimension (“there’s this woman I work with” is correct, but “there’s this woman I’m seeing” feels somewhat less likely) or when you intend a particular commendation, often, but not exclusively, of a sexual nature (“now that is a woman“).

I don’t expect the formal casualness of our society – first names and jeans for everyone – to fade any time soon, and I don’t really want it to; I’m comfortable with it. But there ought to be a way to be casual without being infantilizing. Personally, I’ve been on a one-man crusade to resurrect the archaic term “gal” as a counterpart to “guy” and an alternative to “girl,” so that we have some way to refer to women casually without lumping them in with nine-year-olds. But my campaign hasn’t won many converts, not even in my own house (my wife finds “gal” at once affected and obnoxious). I’m not giving up, though.

By the same token, we need a better term to replace “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” so that we can distinguish adult romances from the storms of adolescence. “Partner” is sterile, and “lover” is comical in its blatancy. Anyway, we came up with one term that fit the bill: casual without being infantilizing, intimate without being blatantly sexual, and with just the right degree of retro irony.

Tell me about it – I turn 27 on Thursday and am desperate to stop dressing like I’m still in college, though if I started dressing more like my hipster-of-a-sort friends in Red Hook that would perhaps be a different kind of infantilizing.

And I too, not consciously necessarily, avoid boyfriend and girlfriend most of the time. I’ve used “ladyfriend” in the past as a tongue-in-cheek reference to my own relationships when I’ve been so fortunate, I also just often use the first term that springs to mind like “item” for instance.

“Boyfriend/girlfriend” as applied to adults refers to an ongoing sexual relationship which is not intended to culminate in marriage, because one or both of the partners is unwilling to commit to the responsibilities that go along with a sexual relationship. It means that the partners want the sexual gratification that comes with adulthood but are unwilling to shoulder the adult responsibilities that go along with it.

“Boyfriend” and “girlfriend” are quite apt to describe such an irresponsible and infantile arrangement. Yes, they are adolescent terms; but it is an adolescent relationship even though the partners are ostensibly adults.

Of course, it is possible for adults to be romantically linked in a way that does recognize the sexual responsibility that should come with adulthood. For those relationships the terms “fiancé” and “fiancée” are quite adequate; and if one is dating someone and the relationship has not yet developed to that level of commitment, “friend” is suitable for both the man and the woman.